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Social Mission

Ketso was launched as a social business in 2009. It is a spin-off from Dr. Joanne Tippett's ESRC funded research at the University of Manchester. We are based in Manchester, UK.

Ketso’s mission is to provide tools for engaging people worldwide, to learn together and develop creative solutions.

The development of Ketso was driven by one clear aim: to enable all voices to be heard in a stimulating and creative dialogue. Using Ketso creates greater engagement. It is a powerful tool for social inclusion.

Making the Ketso product also offers us opportunities to promote social wellbeing. We aim to create job opportunities for disadvantaged people throughout our supply chain. The re-usable jute bags are sourced from an ethical, certified factory in Kolkata (shown here with foot-powered sewing machines), with other components from a fair trade company in Bangladesh.

The kit is assembled in a sheltered workshop in the UK. Our aim is to provide a practical and durable product, but also a product with character – produced by hand and with a history of careful thought and imagination.

To further promote our social mission, we are stewarding the development of a library of open-source resources to promote engagement, effective facilitation and active learning. Ketso provides on-going support to the RoundView, an "open framework that helps us imagine and create a sustainable future". A share of profit from the sale of Ketso goes towards this development and stewardship of open-source resources.

You can learn more about the story of Ketso, and its roots in community development in Southern Africa, here.

Ketso allowed you to focus your thinking. Often traditional group mind mapping can lack structure. The way this gave different stages to types of thinking meant you were not attempting to tackle everything at once, but instead you had a very logical path to follow. Michael Soppitt, Masters Student in Human Centered Computer Systems at the University of Sussex